A CHAPTER REPRINTED FROM Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe EDITED BY THEODORE K. RABB AND JERROLD E. SEIGEL CONTRIBUTORS [oseph R. Strayer Lynn White, Jr. J. Russell Major Gene A. Brucker Lacey Baldwin Smith Jerrold E. Seige! J. Wilson Ferguson Richard M. Douglas J. H. Hexter Myron P. Gilmore Felix Gilbert George Huntston Williams Maurice Lee, Jr. E. William Monter A. J. Carlson Davis Bitton Paul J. Hauben Roland Mushat Frye Theodore K. Rabb Wilbur Samuel Howell Copyright © 1969 by Princeton University Press Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey FRANCE: THE HOLY LAND, THE CHOSEN PEOPLE, AND THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING JOSEPH R. STRAYER WO turning points are obvious in the development of the modern state in Western Europe. The first was a shift in Tloyalties. As long as loyalties (and obedience) were hopelessly divided between ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and as long as the fraction of loyalty which went to secular authority was still further divided among local lords, provincial rulers, and kings, it was hard to frame a concept of the state and almost impossible to make the con- cept a reality. Only when primary (though not exclusive) loyalty went to one secular authority could the state come into existence. The other turning point was closely related to the first. A state must have a certain permanence, and it must have this permanence in geog- raphy as well as in time. A state must have authority not only over such people as choose to give loyalty to its head but over all people who live within certain boundaries. Early kings were kings of peoples, not of regions. A king of the Goths was king of the GOthS whether they were settled on the shores of the Baltic, the Black Sea, or the Bay of Biscay. A king of the Franks was king of the Franks whether he ruled east or west of the Rhine. Kingship was like kinship, primarily per- sonal and only incidentally territorial. A kingdom was composed of people who recognized a certain royal family as their royal family, just as a kin-group was composed of people who recognized the founders of a certain famil y as their common ancestors. A state could not be based on such uncertain foundations. In the thirteenth century there were, in the heart of what we would now call France, men who denied that they belonged to the kingdom of France or that they owed any service to its ruler.' The king and his agents, 1See, e.g., the part of the record of the great lawsuit over royal and episcopal rights in Gevaudan, published by the Societe d'Agriculture, Sciences, et Arts de la Lozere under the title Memoire relati] au pareage de 1307, ed. A. Maisonobe (Mende, 1896). The bishop of Mende asserted his independence throughout the process: e.g., p. 522, "non erat memoria mortalium quod aliquis Gaballitani Episcopus recognovisset se regis Francie fidelem vel subditum aut episcopatum de regno Francie esse." The nobles of Gevaudan went even further and said that the bishop was "rex in Gaballitano" (Archives Departementales, Lozere, G872, £011.38V-40). 3 MONUMENTA GERMA~1AE FRANCE AND THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING quite rightly, viewed these assertions as a threat to their new concepts of government. They insisted that the kingdom was a geographical unit and that within certain boundaries the king had final authority," The concept of the kingdom as a territorial entity was essential in solving the problem of divided loyalties. Brute power and administrative skill were necessary factors in es- tablishing both loyalty to a single authority and acceptance of the idea that the single authority controlled all men and all lands within fixed limits. There was no point in being loyal to local lords who could be crushed by a stronger ruler. There was more reason to accept the assertion of central authority in regions where it had never existed if accepting central authority meant increased security and better govern- ment. But, although power and administrative skill were necessary factors, they were not sufficient by themselves. A state based on power alone has a poor chance for survival. A state built on improved admin- istrative techniques is not apt to gain undying popularity. People soon take the benefits of the new techniques for granted and regret the cost, both in money and in the loss of local privileges. They find that the new techniques may only create new problems-long and expensive foreign wars instead of short, cheap, local wars, financial extortion by bureaucrats instead of by barons. The best administration creates only a tepid loyalty, and very few administrations remained at their best during the Middle Ages. In short, real loyalty is based neither on fear nor on self-interest. There has to be genuine respect, admiration, and, if possible, love for the object of loyalty. This sort of attitude is not always easy to achieve, and, unfortunately, in Western Europe the state emerged at a time when it was difficult to have respect and admiration for any man or any institution. In some regions the problem was never really solved- hence, the chaotic condition of parts of Germany and Italy after 1300. In France the problem was solved, not completely, but well enough so 2 One of the strongest statements appears in the Gevaudan case, p. 521. Since the bishop is "intra fines regni, erat imperio predicti domini regis subjectus." The king can take any property within the realm for the common welfare, "cum omnia que sunt intra fines regni sui sint domini regis. ." The king is "im- perator in regno suo et imperare possit terre et mari, et omnes populi regni sui ejus regantur imperio .... " The bishop's lawyers answered this last assertion very much in the fashion of Hotspur: "Porro utrum dominus rex sit imperator in regno suo vel non, et utrum possit imperare terre et mari et elementis et si obtemperarent ipsa elementa si eisdem imperaret, responsio advocato regio re- linquatur ..• " (p. 532). 4 IOSEPH R. STRAYER that the French state could survive the disasters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One peculiar aspect of the problem in France was that the transfer of loyalty to the king and the definition of the kingdom as a territorial unit took place almost simultaneously, culminating in the reign of Philip the Fair. England had had clearly defined boundaries for gen- erations, and it was equally clear, at least by the end of the twelfth century, that all authority within those boundaries came directly or indirectly from the king. But the thirteenth century Capetians had to invent the France which they claimed to rule. They had to make men proud of the country as well as loyal to the king; they had to expand the idea of France to make it match the expansion of their own power," Some excellent things have been said about the "religion of mon- archy" in France, often by Germans who have looked on the early growth of French nationalism with some envy.' These works touch on the concomitant theme of France as a favored land filled with superior people, but they do not give it quite the importance it should have. A religion without followers would be an idle dream; a most Christian king ruling over the heathen or infidel might become a martyred saint but scarcely a power in European politics. It was the union of the two ideas of the sacred king and the holy country which speeded the emergence of the French state at the end of the thirteenth century. It is scarcely necessary to mention the development of the beliefs which made the king a sacred ruler: the coronation oil brought down from heaven, the healing of the scrofulous, the possession of the relics of Charlemagne, the Crusade tradition. All this has been discussed with great learning by Bloch and by Schramm. Only one point needs to be stressed: the holiness of the king reflects credit on his kingdom. As Guillaume le Breton puts it, "because our king is more worthy a This paragraph was written before the appearance of the stimulating article by Charles T. Wood, "Regnum Prancie, a Problem in Capetian Administrative Usage," Traditio, XXIII (1967), 117-147. 'P. E. Schramm, Der König von Frankreich (Weimar, 1939); Helene Wieru- szowski, Vom Imperium zum nationalen Königtum (Munich/Berlin, 1933); K. Wenck, Philipp der Schöne von Frankreich (Marburg, 1905); H. Finke, Welt- imperialismus und nationale Regungen im späteren Mittelalter (Freiburg/Leip- zig, 1916); F. Kern, Die Anfänge der französischen Ausdehnungspolitik (Tübingen, 1910); H. Kämpf, Pierre Dubois und die geistigen Grundlagen des französischen Nationalbewusstseins um 1300 (Leipzig/Berlin, 1935). The basic book in French is Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges (Strasbourg, 1924)' 5 FRANCE AND THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING than any other king, the greater excellence of our kingdom is made clear,"" Another closely associated idea is that the holy and pious king reigns over an especially devout kingdom. For example, the protest on behalf of the king to the Pope in 1245 calls Louis IX a "most Christian prince" and then goes on to speak of the "kingdom of the Franks, where men are accustomed to be most devout." Primat expressed the same idea a generation later when he said that the faith was held more fervently in France than in any other land.' He added that one reason for this devoutness was that "la fonteine de clergie" flourished at Paris and that chivalry and scholarship worked together for good," Guil- laume de Nangis tied all these ideas together when he used the Heur de lis, a symbol of royal holiness, as a symbol of the preeminence of France.